From Sustainable Cities: Melbourne is in the middle of a transport planning nightmare. Our elected officials are committing to megaroad projects that won’t ease congestion. Instead we’re left with transport,…

Thirty days, yes, thirty short days to respond to 10,000 pages of the West Gate Tunnel Environmental Effects Statement! From Colleen Hartland, MP​: thetollroadwontwork.org.au The West Gate Tunnel Environmental Effects…

To all parties with an interest in the Western Distributor Here is Victorian Transport Action Group’s (VTAG’s) paper that assesses the impact of the Western Distributor (WD) and offers 10 recommendations…

Podcast topics cover the public transport improvements we could see for the same investment as a new toll-road, looking at methods to improve our existing roads and to get trucks off them and exploring the environmental and health impacts of the proposed project.

NELink design schematic is extremely confusing, intersections/crossings. Project management believe local creeks where replanting has occurred and wildlife now live are ‘degraded’. Possibly to be replaced with barrel drains. Many endangered and special species live in NELink project area, including fish, grasses, micro bats, birds. Many noticeable older habitat trees, culturally significant areas, Bolin Bolin billabong, songlines tree estimated to be 600 years old

North East Link Forum #3: Samantha Dunn & John Stone: John Stone from Melbourne Uni, how communities come together to not allow their cities to be overwhelmed by cars, like NELink. He mentions how Transurban moved quickly after 2014 election to hijack Victorian transport agenda. EES/CIS processes around megaprojects are now designed to confuse the public, simply isn’t worlds best practice. Similar traffic modelling taken to court in QLD/NSW. Only reason for traffic modelling is to distort reality, it’s for bankers and rent seekers, megaprojects like NELink, EWLink, WestGateTunnel aren’t developed as solutions to anything other than financial gain. John talks about lessons learnt from campaigns against EWLink and F19, building strong engaged communities who want a better Melbourne. John concludes: do we want $20-30 BILLION spent on megaprojects or do we want this money spent on hospitals, school’s and public transport.

North East Link Forum #4: Samantha Dunn and Audience Q&A: public questions, speakers + local councillors from Manningham Council, applause when resident mentions she been waiting for Doncaster Rail for over 20 years. Tony Morton explains tired and predictably bureaucratic arguments against Doncaster Rail. Mentions positive example in Western Australia where govt built new line despite criticism. Topics also include air pollution, congestion pricing, psychological health, infrastructure planning and urgent need to have many different perspectives taken into consideration when projects are planned.

North East Link Forum #5: The Greens Transport Plan: Samantha Dunn discusses The Greens’ plan for the North East, build upon DART, advocate for Doncaster Rail, keep existing rail reservation, look at tram extensions and new high quality rapid bus network and routes for Melbourne.

Public transport in Melbourne has suffered from decades of underfunding. Trains and trams are overcrowded, buses are unreliable and the city is still growing fast. Metro Trains is a multinational corporation that is given $600 million annually to run Melbourne’s transport system. Metro makes tens of millions of dollars in profit every year which is paid to shareholders instead of being reinvested into public transport.

The solutions are simple

1. Take public transport back into public hands. The government should stop subsidising Metro’s business and run public transport for people, not for profit.

2. Reinvest in public transport. A modern train signaling system would increase train line capacity and ease the extreme peak hour congestion on trains. We are calling for $1 billion to be reinvested into a better train, tram and bus system for all.

3. We need to fight for free public transport. The cost of running the Myki system isn’t worth it, and paying for an army of ticket inspectors to intimidate poor people is a disaster for public life.

4. We need reliable and frequent transport. We support ten minute all-day and five minute peak hour trains on all northern lines and indeed across the city. Trams should be taken up to 2 and 3 minute frequency in peak hour, and 5-6 mins all day. Bus services should run every ten minutes, all day with direct routes that connect to rail stations and times. All bus services should provide night time and weekend service.

If, like me, you’ve been following the fallout from Melbourne’s East West Link freeway fiasco, you will have noticed that the bill for the Andrews government’s decision to stop the project somehow keeps growing. In April 2015, cancelling the contracts was going to cost the state $339 million in compensation. In December 2015, the ABC reported that the price tag had risen to $1.1 billion. Last week the Age had the cost reaching $1.3 billion.

Victorians will be relieved to hear that the real number is nothing like $1.3 billion. Publicly available information shows that the cost directly incurred by cancelling the contracts was $527,600,000 — a lot of money, but less than half the Age’s figure. That’s $339 million in compensation to the private sector for costs incurred (including compo for losing bids to build it); $81 million in bank fees for a facility set up for the project; $217 million in losses on swaps and other hedges; $600,000 spent by the government on legal and consulting fees to get out of the thing; and subtract from that $110 million in cash returned to state coffers. The figure has shifted a little — some of the bank fees and swaps have fluctuated in price or been repurposed for other projects — but it has remained well short of the billion-dollar mark. Read more